[502] Hate By Any Other Name

Is there a single, more motivating, more prevalent, and more accurate assessment of why humans do anything than out of hatred? Know that I ask this sincerely, and am not just trying to stick with some theme for the sake of it. When the tides feel like they're turning and the world you knew starts to become unrecognizable, I feel I must argue that it started with hate. While the only truth may be change, the more significant facts seem related to what accelerated or provoked that change. I'll argue two-fold; I'll describe why I think it's hatred, and I'll speak against those who would claim it's about love.

I want to add an initial caveat. For the sake of this argument, I'm forgoing any presumptions about “balance.” I think it's an artful word often employed to swallow bullshit. Anyone who wants to point to the grayness of life and decision making, needlessly leaning on “how complicated it all is” or the amount of give and take involved I'm not going to find persuasive if merely asserting that is the extent of your argument.

So, as I often do, I want to give examples big and small and hopefully throughout history. For a small example, consider weight, both loss and gain. For me, when it comes to loss, I'm never more motivated than when I think about how much I hate and constantly make fun of ridiculously out of shape or gargantuan people. Claims about my immaturity or civility aside, all I have to do is think of each successive pound gained and the amount of things I'm ignoring, forgoing, or hating about myself to get that large in order to zap away my sympathies. I don't mean to unfairly clump moms, people with conditions, or the otherwise basically healthy person who finds themselves gaining as they get old.

For the above, I consider culture. Why is it when an area adopts a “western diet” do they start to die earlier, find all forms of disease they never had, and help contribute to the destruction of the environment? Is it because “they absolutely love shitty food?” It's an easy way to state the problem, absolutely. It's a way to overburden our sensory reward systems and make it sound like a good thing. But what's really happened? I would argue, some executive and dialogue concerning profits and the free market are held in greater esteem than a concern for humanity or the planet. Someone hates you. Someone with significantly more power and influence than you can appreciate has shaped us into translating their hatred into lovable language regarding your preferences and presumed decision making.

Now, you get to love being fat while pretending and ignoring just how much you probably really hate it. You hate knowing that people like me can tell non-stop fat jokes for hours. You hate breathing hard. You hate worrying about your health or taking it for granted that you'll be dead a little sooner anyway and won't have to worry for as long. You rely on the language concerning sabotaged “choices” to both reinforce your sense of ownership of your circumstances and distancing yourself from notions of anyone behind the curtain.

This bridges neatly into a discussion about capitalism and the free-market. It's a religion by any other name. Companies hate losing money more than they like to put on some shiny veneer about some “revolutionary” and “necessary” new gadget or food. They hate competition. They hate notions of equality and sharing. They'll, to their dying breath, espouse the “morals” and “freedoms” that you lose by not having big corporate brother to dictate what belongs in your home or body. The Hayek or Friedman ideologues who, even when given the chance to run their neoliberal experiments, ignore the human suffering caused because they can't own and be honest about the amount of hatred they have about losing their station.

“Nation building” is all about subverting wills and keeping people dead or ignorant. “Energy independence” couldn't take foot until the profit margin could be realized. The New Deal was people reacting to the hatred they felt towards starving and a predictable, arguably planned, market crash. When new presidents are ushered in, it's because the population is often too stupid and forgetful to understand that what they hate started 30, 100, or 1000 years ago, and the president isn't outside of gas stations manipulating the price. It's an elite hatred that condenses and protects power with psychopathic efficiency.

Why do we genuinely have to fear a Trump presidency? It's not because people tap into the energy of love or the stream of youth consciousness fighting to keep his name relevant. It's because hatred, blind ignorant hatred for you, for themselves, for the history and facts they'll never understand, is the most powerful force. I've asked how so many Tea-baggers got into congress. Racism is more powerful than any liberal idealism. Bernie or bust? They hate Hilary, not love Teddy and FDR. Let it all burn if you can't get your way. Because it's easy. Because it's normal. Because until we started inventing notions of high-society and worldly-inclusive mindsets, it's been a couple hundred thousand years of instilled habitual hatred towards the other. It's been ignorant fearful animals lashing out in order to stay alive or revel in the glory of conquest.

You will never and not fix anything until you appreciate the depth of our cultural hatred. You will never escape the negative feedback wheel of adopting that hatred, protecting that hatred, and spreading that hatred. You “choose” between Target and Wal-mart, with an ignorant smug smile while you say “Tar-gjaaay,” you know, because you're fancy, with the thought that every indebted food-stamp using worker doesn't deserve to be freely educated or have access to healthcare because they're not you who's really had it rough and deserves a lifestyle and attitude befitting.

One of the best tricks that's ever been played is getting you to adopt the attitude and hateful extravagance of the rich without getting any of the benefits. You think being able to afford a gym membership or to be able to vacation once in a while is something to be proud of. Spending and acquiring to put distance between you and your hard-fought modern sensibilities and “the rest” who don't or can't access your resources. It's not your love of poor people that provokes the charitable donation. It's the hate and resentment you hold for what you have, that you know, in some important way, you don't really deserve.

Ask yourself what happens to people that do love. Where do the advocates end up if it's not in jail or to obscurity? Dead? Often enough. Immortalized in a facebook quote, statue, or documentary? Whoo-hoo. Manipulated and re-interpreted or reimangined to promote the exact opposite of what they intended? If a slurry of religious myths doesn't come to mind, take away how easy it is to ignore how much God hated what he had done and the award-winning re-branding there. The language of love used to ignore the sheer depravity and depth of the hatred. You love your country that would rather pay middle men than keep you alive? That sends your poor to unnecessary war? That bilks you for tax dollars while daily reports show the rich stocking and hoarding? That literally has a paper trail describing how they plan to keep you down? (I encourage you to read as much as you can about the Powell memo.)

It's the anecdote of immigrant parents who, escaping more visible and dramatic hatred, sought a place where they could comfortably instill the mythological powers of achievement born out of a specific time and place. That part itself wasn't done maliciously, but when given the opportunity to expand and become aware of larger forces that helped shape their “self-made” image, they recoiled like the rich and said, “No! Fuck you, fuck them, it was all about me!”